Crossing
Masculinities 4 Towards
a critical renewal of antisexist politics by men

Part 2: Towards a critical renewal of antisexist politics by men

If antisexist politics by men is to have a future worth talking about
it must, in my opinion, become part of a kind of organising that, on the
one hand, takes constructions of identity seriously in their social
reality and efficacy, and on the other, and equally, attempts to resist
the excluding and homogenizing violence of identities. I refuse the
dichotomous choice between “identity politics” and “critique of
identity”. In practice, this could mean the simultaneity and
overlapping of mixed and separate forms of organizing within an alliance
network.

Critiquing the homogenizing and excluding effects of gender
categories should become part of the “program” of men’s groups
much more than it has ever, to my knowledge, been in the FRG. In my
eyes, this means first and foremost, dealing with the differences
between men. When speaking of “men’s groups, men’s ‘movement’”,
the term “man” calls up the association “white heterosexual man
from the new middle classes” - this needs to be addressed as a problem
and taken more seriously than it has been up to now. White bourgeois
groups of heterosexuals should call themselves just that – or
something else, but not simply “men’s groups”. The issue of class
differences and the debate about different types of masculinity
(subaltern, complicit, hegemonic…) needs to get more attention than it
has. It’s necessary to try and (re)start dialogues between straight,
bisexual and gay left, antisexist men. And of course I think a debate on
the political status of masculinity among women/lesbians, intersexual,
transsexual and transgendered people would be very valuable. But before
anything of the kind could work out, many left men with antisexist ideas
have some serious homework to do. To put it mildly.

Another huge issue, of course, is the narrowness of the “ethnic
spectrum” of “traditional” men’s groups and the sidelining of
ethnicity as an issue in their practice. Masculinity is a resource that
gets used, along with ethnicity, class etc., to gain status; different
racialized/ethnicized identities include different kinds of masculinity.
Differences among men of different ethnic backgrounds and the potential
for emotional injury when communicating across such divides should be
taken into account much more than they have ever been in my experience
(or my own past practice, for that matter). One precondition for better
communication between between white men of the majority population and
men from a migrant background would be for the former to take a hard
look at and and really deal with internalized racist and antisemitic
stereotypes, images of “other men” and the tendency to project “bad”,
disavowed and split off aspects of oneself onto “other men”.

The analysis of German antisemitism, be it in the mainstream of
society or within the Left, has, up till now, largely remained the
project of usually gender-blind male theoreticians. It is high time the
connections between sexism and antisemitism, Germanness and masculinity
were explored, by means of consciousness-raising as well as
theoretically, and political practice was informed with this knowledge.

Regarding sexuality, too (a “classical” topic of men’s groups),
I would like to see some new approaches: In view of the antifeminist
offensive in the current debate over rape within the German “radical
left”, I consider a debate on sexuality, reaching as many people as
possible, more urgent today than ever. I find many people on the left
pretty disoriented regarding this field in terms of theory; and, as far
as I know, in terms of communicating about sexuality outside the
classical private sphere, it’s not looking any better: I haven’t
seen any kind of verbal and somatic communication about erotic wishes
and boundaries - that’s really different, in a positive way, from what’s
going on in the mainstream of society - establishing itself in any of
the left subcultures I am familiar with.

I do believe men’s groups can be one suitable place to talk about
sexuality. But I absolutely do not think men should speak about
sexuality only or mainly in men’s groups. The argument that some
proponents of men’s groups have often used, that it is easier for men
to talk about sexuality in such groups has always put me extremely ill
at ease. For one, this implicitly defines a men’s group as a
desexualized and thus pacified space, because, it seems, it’s supposed
that all men involved are super-straight and totally not interested in
each other anyhow, so that we can all finally have a good talk now, in
peace and quiet, about our problems with women. I find this unspoken
supposition annoying, and I’d consider a group that really did work
like this quite a conservative institution in fact, and extremely
boring, too. What’s more, I find heterosexual men telling other men
things about their sexuality that they’re not telling the women they’re
involved with, for fear of conflict or shame or whatever, quite
problematic. That may be acceptable, in particular circumstances, as an
interim solution, but as a permanent practice what is this but masculine
“solidarity” of the worst sort?

Another problem I see in men’s groups’ dealing with sexuality is
the common tendency – shared by most discourses on sexuality – to
narrow down the field of the erotic to gender. Whereas in fact, all
kinds of difference, cultural, ethnic, what have you, are eroticized;
sexuality is never just about gender but always about race, class,
ethnicity etc., as well[19]. If sexual politics is not to remain a field
dominated by white middle class perspectives, it is, in my opinion, very
important to work out the racist dimensions of sexuality, among others,
and foreground them politically[20].

If I’ve created the impression now that I see sexuality mainly as
an assemblage of relations of domination – this is not the case. It’s
true I don’t think much of schematically separating out good sexuality
from bad violence[21]: domination is not external to sexuality.
Domination works within and through sexuality and helps constitute it.
Yet I believe it’s completely wrong to reduce sexuality to domination.

Certainly, as I see it, sexuality emerges when, in the socialization
process, desires are forced under the primacy of genitality and
heterosexualized. (A liberation from this sexualization would be a
liberation towards other sexualities, or post-sexual practices - or
whatever this might be called in the future – that would no longer
have to bear the “burden” of being this secular religion that modern
sexuality is, this only form of ecstatic satisfaction and energetic
exchange[22] available to humans).

Yet the diversity of desires persists within the sexual, the
conformist formation of sexuality fails just as necessarily as the
construction of unambiguous gender identities must fail in the end. And
this is why sexuality has its own “logic”, that cannot be reduced to
politics and discourse.

[19] See “Desire and Difference” by Jonathan Dollimore, in:
Stecopoulos/Uebel: Race and the Subject of Masculinities, 1997.[20] See
Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien, “Black Masculinity and the Sexual
Politics of Race” in K. Mercer: Welcome to the Jungle, 1994.

[21] That’s why I continue to speak of sexual violence rather than
using the term “sexualized violence”.

[22] I believe that conceptions of vital energy, as they have been
developed in various non-western traditions (chi in chinese medicine,
prana in the yogic/ayurvedic tradition, etc.), but also exist on the
margins of official biological-medical discourses in the West,
correspond to real phenomena. I see the tendency in some left circles of
unquestioningly taking over the dogmas of mainstream science and
suspecting all divergent views of being politically suspect, esoteric,
irrationalist etc. as a very regrettable kind of rationalist
narrowmindedness. I recommend the study of the “Dialectic of
Enlightenment” (1947).

My view that conceptions of vital energy, as well as practically and
theoretically drawing on experiences and conceptions from various
traditions of body therapy, can be invaluable for a critique of actually
existing sexuality has not changed over the last 20 years, except maybe
that I am more convinced of it today than